Why are you called andyfied?

Over the years many, many people have asked me why I refer to myself as andyfied when the name on my birth certificate has no variation on Andy Fried or Field. This immediately causes them to be revealed as the lack-a-daisical sloppy scan readers that they are. “Read it again,” I say, “Show me where the r or l are”. These extra letters are not included in my name and the ‘andy’ part is linked to the ‘fied’ part. It is a single name like Ronaldo or Skynet so do not insult me by chopping it up. Expand your mind! Don’t get caught up thinking names can only follow the given name, family name format.

So why this name at all? Well it’s not a good reason. Most people will be disappointed when they find out, bear this in mind before you read on. Click here if you don’t wish to know.

Thousands of years ago, very approximately, in the mid-to-late 90s I was young and was starting to get to grips with the exciting world of the internets. Words had the letter ‘e’ as a prefix instead of ‘i’ and I started to hang out on irc channels under the screen names j, k and sometimes jk. It was around this time that I walked past my sister who was on the phone to her friend. My sister mentioned something to me and her friend questioned it. “I thought your brother was called Mark?” she said. “He is.” said my sister. “Oh,” said her friend “I thought you called him Andy.”

Later she suggested that I could be andyfied in the same way that people could be horrified or terrified (why not delighted?). After that I decided to take it as my screen name on irc, chat rooms and online games for a number of reasons:

• At eight characters, it isn’t too long for most people, but it isn’t so short that it’s forgettable.
• It’s pretty easy to type, just try it yourself. Go ahead and open up Wordpad or something. I can wait. (The lack of a capital means you press less keys!)
• It can be shortened to ‘af’ if you are in a hurry. (Never anything else!)
• It is unique.
• It doesn’t have numbers or obscure ASCII symbols in it, nor does it sound retarded like xxAzNdEaThKiLlAlOt9137xx(ツ)

So there you have it. I hope it was worth navigating here to find out.

Byeeeee!!!!!